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It starts like this: a warm Friday night in the headiness of late September, the air crisp, with her gasping awake to the sound of her own cries. The room is obscured in black, the walls looming like monuments, murals of moonlight casting rays across the ceiling. The clock glares with an angry 2am, and in the recesses of her mind she can hear a heart monitor. She knows immediately what jolted her from sleep.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Steady and sound. But then it jolts. Beep, flatline, beep, fibrillation. She thinks that’s what the doctors had called it, though most of her memory from that night is clouded. There are fragments and flashes: the feeling of her back against the cold bathroom wall, the sterile scent of hand sanitiser, the image of blood being mopped from the hallways. But most of all, she remembers his face. The operating room had been full of people, a dozen a side of the table, but she’d been able to catch horrible glimpses of his unconscious profile. She wishes she hadn’t, because for all the things she can’t remember with clarity the picture of him lying pale and teetering refuses to leave her. Particularly in sleep.
Donna doesn’t need to strain to recall her nightmare, because by now it is familiar. It’s the same story, and would be ad nauseum to the point of boredom if it wasn’t still potent enough to affect her so strongly. Really, the crux of it is quite simple: she’s at Rosslyn, the shots go off, and he dies beneath her hands, his blood slippery between her fingers.
The room around her is still pitched in darkness. The walls are hungry. Her heart thumps unsteadily, and her breaths come in great gasps. Before she knows it, or can even think it through, she’s reaching for the phone.
It rings, and rings, and rings. Each second that she waits feels like a twelve hour surgery in GW. She knows on a logical level that he should be asleep, like any normal person would be at two o'clock in the morning. But she can’t think with that part of her brain, not when all she can see is him, dead and lifeless, slick with his own insides.
The phone crackles to life. “Donna?” He breathes. His voice is thick and edged with sleep, but more than that the concern is palpable. She can picture the look on his face.
Donna takes a breath to steady herself. She can’t think of what to say. Her hands are trembling too much and the ceiling is too low and the room is too hot, hot like a bullet, hot like lead.
He calls her name again, but it feels far away. She squeezes her eyes shut.
“I’m coming over,” he says suddenly.
“No!” Donna shouts, suddenly finding her voice. “I meant…no. I’m fine, Josh.”
He coughs. “I don't think so.” She hears the rustling of sheets in the background, and tries to focus on the image of him sitting up against the headboard. “Did something happen?”
Donna shakes her head, forgetting that he can’t see her. “No,” she whispers.
“Donna?”
She wants to say something, anything, but words are lost on her. She knows what she needs: him, his apartment, his hands on her shoulders holding her down. But she doesn’t say any of those things, because what is the protocol for asking her boss if she can come over to his apartment at two in the morning in her pyjamas and crash on his couch? What is the protocol for telling him that she needs to be able to hear him breathing through the crack of his bedroom door as a reminder of his existence?
But Josh seems to know what she wants. It is moments like these when she wonders how he’s the same man that she’s been working with for the last three years, the same man who teases her like a child at recess, the same man who yells and shouts and drags her into the office on weekends. He is the man who forgets the names of senators, the man who forgets himself in the Oval Office, and yet he has never been the man to forget her or her many intricacies.
“Come over,” he says firmly, and it isn’t a question.
“Okay,” she replies, relieved, and hangs up.
There is no need to knock when she arrives because he’s already waiting, the door open, with blue pyjama pants slung loosely on his slender hips. For once, no primal urge is elicited within her. She can’t even find it within her to focus on that, not when he is shirtless and the scar on his chest is visible. It is puckered pink, angry against the expanse of pale skin. A single breath from where she knows his heart lies.
Donna cannot find the words, so transfixed on the reminder of what she nearly lost.
Josh takes a tentative step towards her. “Donnatella,” he breathes. She’s always loved the sound of her name on his tongue, loved the way he seemed to hold it with such reverence. It usually makes her want to kiss him senseless. But now she feels nothing except for the urge to cry, curl up into a ball, and scream.
She does not get the chance to, though, because he takes another step into her atmosphere and the air heats. She can smell him, all coffee and lemon and bedsheets, all Josh, so familiar. He stops centimetres from her, and she finds her hands suddenly outstretched. They drift, fingers skimming the fraction between them, ghosting over the evidence of burning metal and evil and fuck, she thinks, she’s never needed to touch him as badly as she needs to right now.
“Donna?” The air of his voice feathers across her cheek. His breath is hot.
“Joshua,” is all she says, because it is all she can say. She feels a choke rising in her chest.
He lifts his hand to her shoulder slowly, and brushes her hair from it. “Did something happen?” She looks at him and his eyes are large and boiling with worry. “Please tell me what’s wrong. You’re scaring me, Donna.”
“I…” She starts, but falters. “I was just…”
She cracks. The tears begin to fall fast. Donna feels her knees start to wobble beneath her, and her feet starting to shake.
“Oh,” is all that Josh says before he closes the space between them. She almost audibly moans when his arms encircle her and join at the small of her back. It feels different this time. Not like their other embraces. She can't put her finger on it, but then realises what it is: he's holding her.
They’ve never held each other before. They have hugged, that is sure, often enough for her to be able to map the shape of his shoulderblades the way she can map the more intimate streets of Madison. The scent of his cologne is familiar enough that she can place it in a room of a hundred. She knows exactly where the crook of his neck fits the bump of her nose the best. And yet, they have not held each other until now.
“I’m sorry,” she suddenly chokes, feeling strangely guilty. This is surely it. The time she has gone too far. He’s her boss above anything else, her employer before her friend, and god, she’ll be out of a job by morning for this, and-
“You don’t have to be sorry,” he says, and what?
“You aren’t mad at me?” Donna sniffles, and pulls away slightly to gauge his reaction.
“God, Donna, for what?” He sounds incredulous at the mere suggestion. “I’m not…I’m not mad.”
He clutches her tighter to him again, and starts to rub circles into her skin through her tee shirt. She registers him whispering to her, but can’t decipher the words. The feeling in her chest is enough, and whatever it is makes her sob more until she can’t form a coherent sound or sentence. Her soul is wholly bared, and she feels utterly exposed.
Donna leans into him harder, looking to hide, but moreso looking for something to grip to. Something in her brain, that little voice, tells her that he’ll slip away if she doesn’t. Slip, slip, slipping. So she snakes her hands into his curls and tangles them there, and finds that she doesn’t care if it hurts him. He is so pink and real against her, so heavy and warm, not bone white like a spectre as he had been in her dream, and she thinks she’d trade anything to sink into his skin right now.
She pours herself into his shoulder until the tears eventually subside. Her breaths shudder against him, the occasional gasp choking out of her, as she comes down from the emotional high. He doesn’t move from her, not an inch, until she feels steady on her feet again.
He pulls back once she’s quietened. “You’re gonna freeze to death in this doorway,” he says, then tucks her hair behind her ears. “Come inside.”
Donna nods weakly, and he props her up with a hand to her back as they move. When they reach the couch he helps her down and declares that he’ll find a blanket for her, but when he returns a moment later he’s holding three. All of them end up draped over her shoulders, and all of them smell like him.
She sits inhaling his scent while he busies himself in the kitchen. She tries to focus on everything she can see, everything that is characteristically Josh, anything and everything that is a reminder of him. The dozens of books, the scatterings of paperwork, the stacks of DVDs and CDs, the sports posters and magazines. All the little parts of him that make him whole.
“Here,” Josh says, suddenly reappearing with two mugs. He gently hands her one and she instantly identifies the tang of lemon and ginger.
“You got my favourite,” she says.
“Nice one, Captain Obvious,” he jests lightly, and for the first time in an hour she cracks a little smile. “Yeah, I got your favourite. Well, actually, I got three. Because sometimes-”
“I say lemon and ginger is my favourite but sometimes I say peppermint is my favourite, but then I also say chamomile is my favourite?” She finishes, leaving his mouth agape. “Yes, Josh. God forbid a girl’s tastes be dependent on the day.”
He rolls his eyes. “Drink your tea,” he says insistently, and sidles in beside her.
She sits half-contentedly for a few minutes, sipping away. The warmth that floods her is nice, though does little to quell the insistent fear droning away inside of her. But he’s right beside her, knees tucked under the pile of blankets, chest drifting up and down, so she tries to focus on that instead. The rhythm of his breathing. In, out. In, out. In, out.
After a while he must notice this, because he places his mug on the console and turns to face her. She tries not to meet his gaze but it is impossible to avoid it. He has this funny way about him, of pulling her right in. She can’t decide if she hates it or loves it.
He sets a hand on her ankle through the blankets. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” His voice is low. “Because, well, to be quite frank, you scared the hell out of me when you called. I thought…”
“I’m fine,” she dismisses, and blinks her eyes shut momentarily as she breathes heavily through her nose. “It was nothing, really. I just…I just had a…god,” she says, and laughs self-depricatingly. “This is so embarrassing.”
Josh shrugs. “Donna, you saw my ass when I was in the hospital. I don’t think anything could get more embarrassing than that.”
Despite herself, she’s immune to the trademark Joshua Lyman charm. She smiles, but lets it quickly drop. She really needs to tell him, or she’ll look even more ridiculous.
“Okay, can you just…not be you, for a moment? If that’s possible?”
Josh nods, and looks at her expectantly. Now or never, then.
“I had a nightmare,” she rushes out. “I mean, I’ve…I’ve had it before, lots of times. But it was worse, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe.” She pauses and lets her eyes drift to his. His face is etched with nothing but sympathy.
“And what happened?” Josh ventures. “In your nightmare, I mean. If you wanna talk about it, of course. Which you don’t have-"
“I was at Rosslyn. I was walking beside you, and you were saying something entirely inane and ridiculous.”
“That sounds like me,” he says, but the humour in his voice is suddenly void at the mention of Rosslyn.
“Yeah,” she breathes. “That’s the thing. It was just. So realistic, y’know? And I couldn’t shake it. That’s why I called.”
Josh’s hand shifts from her ankle to her calf. “You were right to.” He rubs tiny ministrations into her exposed skin where her pants have ridden up. “You can always call me, Donna. You know that, right?”
She nods weakly, and shudders again. “So. I was there, beside you. And I could see the motorcade and the cars. I could see CJ in front of me. She was taller, in my dream, for some reason. And then the shots rang out.”
“Donna…”
“I couldn’t see you. I couldn’t find you. I could hear screaming and running. There were sirens and ambulances everywhere. I think I must’ve…I must’ve pieced it all together from what I’d seen on the TV and from what everyone had told me after.”
“And then I did find you. You were clutching your hand to your chest. And it was…” She pauses, choking, and feels a second wave of tears brimming over. “There was so much blood. So much. And I tried to stop it, I really did, I did all the things that you’re taught to do, but it was- I couldn’t- and you-”
She trails off. It’s too much.
“Donna, Donna, Donna,” Josh hums, and then she’s back in his arms.
“I’m sorry,” she sobs. “I’ve ruined your night.”
Josh laughs a little. “There was nothing to ruin.” He lightly drums his fingers against the curve of her spine. “To tell the truth, Donna, I was hoping you’d call. Not like this, obviously. Not like this.”
Donna sniffs into his shoulder. “You wanted me to call?”
He shrugs beneath her. “Yeah, why not?” His grip on her tightens. “You always have something interesting to say. You’re Donna.”
She giggles wetly, and moves her head back an inch until they’re eye-to-eye. Up this close, she can see the individual spindles of brown flecking his eyes. One, two, three. Four, five, six.
“You know you don’t need to worry,” he says, and takes a hand to her skin to wipe away the moisture.
Seven, eight, nine. “I know,” she replies. “But I do.”
Ten, eleven, twelve. “I’m not disappearing anytime soon,” he adds. “You’d miss me too much if I did.” Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. “What are you doing?”
Donna blinks, and loses count. “Nothing,” she lies.
He seems like he's considering pushing it for a moment, but doesn't. Instead, he wipes her tears away once more. The action is futile, though, because the tenderness of it only makes her cry more.
“I’ll tell you why you don’t need to worry about me,” Josh says slowly, and suddenly clasps one of her hands in his. He takes it to his chest, and places it over his scar. “Look, Donna. Feel it.”
Shaking, she looks down. She slowly lets her fingers drift over his skin, the tips lightly ghosting the tissue, and he shivers. He is alive, quivering beneath her hands, and he is beautiful.
“See?” He lifts his own hand to cover hers. “I made it.”
She looks back up at him. His eyes are fixed upon her face.
“I’m here,” he says, and squeezes her hand tight. “And I…I’m always gonna be. Donna, I promise you. No matter where we are in the world. In the White House, on a campaign trail, in different hemispheres, working together or not…I promise you, I will be there whenever you need me and whenever you don’t.”
Donna swallows. In the three years that she’s known him, she’s heard a lot of things: insults, nonsense, political brilliance, and even compliments. He’s got a fine tongue. A Harvard educated tongue. She’s spent thousands of hours listening to it. And despite all of that, he’s still finding things to say that make her weak in the knees.
“Josh,” she croons.
“I mean it,” he says, and drops her hand.
“You do?”
“Without a shadow of a doubt.”
“Oh.”
He smiles at her. “Cat got your tongue, Donnatella?”
“Shut up,” she says, and sniffs. “I was just thinking of something I could say to you that wouldn’t be a compliment.”
“Such a charmer,” Josh jibes. “No wonder Dr Freeride fell for you.”
“No wonder you hired me,” she adds.
“Damn right,” he says. “You charmed your way into that office that day, Donnatella. How could I have said no to a face like that?”
Donna bites her lip. “A face like what?” His face blanches, and she restrains herself to revel in the glee of watching him squirm. “I’m kidding,” she says. "Relax."
Josh looks suddenly serious. “I’m not,” he replies, voice low and husky. “You’re a…you’re a very beautiful woman, Donnatella. That isn’t why I hired you, though. For the record.”
She flushes. “Stop trying to make me feel better,” she says shakily. “You know that doesn’t work, Josh.”
Josh shrugs. “I’m not trying to…make you feel better, Donna,” he says, and laughs half-bitterly. “I just…”
“What?”
“It’s nothing,” he dismisses.
Donna stares at him, and sees the palpable wistfulness in his gaze. If she were any more lucid and emotionally coherent, she’s sure that she’d be picking up on something here. But she isn’t, and she’s tired, and she wants to yawn and his couch is so, so, comfy. So she decides to let it go.
“Okay,” she says non-committedly. Whatever it is, he’ll eventually tell her as he always does.
“You can sleep here,” Josh tells her. “I don’t want you driving back.”
She can’t muster up the energy to protest. Even if she could, she wouldn’t.
“Take the bed,” he adds. “I’ll be fine here.”
“But your chest,” she says. “You’re still healing.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“No,” she insists. “You stay in your bed. I’ll just sleep on the couch.”
“Donna…”
She sighs, and sits up. “Fine, then. We can share.”
“Donna-”
“We are both responsible adults, Josh,” she says matter-of-factly. “Okay, well, I am. And I am also tired and emotionally exhausted and I really, really, would just like to get at least another hour in before I have to be up for work.”
Josh narrows his eyes very unconvincingly. “No funny business.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she lies.
Five minutes later she finds herself under his sheets with one of his ratty college tees pulled over her little camisole. She’s turned to face him, while he lies on his back (Doctor’s orders, she insisted). She watches his profile closely, and follows the gentle rhythm of his chest. In, out, in, out. It's better than counting sheep.
“I can see you, you know,” Josh whispers into the dark. The moonlight is peering through the window and spilling onto his face. She wants to reach out and touch him.
“This just feels weird,” Donna says, not entirely untruthfully. She likes being in his bed- loves it even- but never imagined being so far apart from him in it. In her visions, there was a lot more closeness and a lot less clothes involved.
“Our first sleepover,” Josh says, and turns over to face her. She frowns in admonishment, but it goes ignored. “Maybe if you braid my hair and gossip about boys it will feel more natural.”
Her eyes roll back to the sky. She’s never understood how he does it- make light of every situation and set her at ease.
“Josh, if I was to gossip about boys I fear you’d spontaneously combust.”
“Probably,” he agrees.
“And if I was to braid your hair,” she starts sleepily, and yawns, “the rest of it would fall out.”
“I can’t control my hairline,” he argues.
“But you can help it.”
“What would help you?” He juts in disjointedly, and she frowns in puzzlement. “To sleep, I mean.”
Donna bites her lip. “I don’t…”
Josh holds her in his gaze for a moment, thoughtful, and then drops one of his arms to the pillow beside him. “C’mere,” he says. “I won’t bite. Just don't braid my hair.”
At the offer, she doesn’t hesitate. She shuffles into his side and rests her head on his shoulder, humming contentedly as he brings his arm around her torso. She knows it’s cliche, like a cheesy line in a terrible bestseller, but they really do fit together perfectly, in a way that boss and assistant shouldn’t.
“Josh,” she says suddenly. “Don’t fire me over this.”
“Donna, I think we crossed that line of me-being-able-to-fire-you long ago.”
“I’m impervious,” she jibes, and feels his chest rumble beneath her.
“Yeah,” he mumbles. “Impervious.”
“You’re an idiot,” she snipes. “You know that, right?”
“And you love it.”
And she does.
“Go to sleep now,” he says, and curls a hand into the ends of her hair. “I’ll wake you when it’s time.”
Donna hums into his side, and lets sleep take her. She knows that this- whatever it is- is something that they won’t talk about along with their ever growing list of other things between them that they don’t talk about. But for now it is enough. She is content with this, a silent declaration, until the time is right. He is warm against her, and his hands are heavy, and he is alive. It has to be enough. It has to be.